NASA employees are concerned with SpaceX’s risk assessment and its inexperienced space suit.
The Hubble Space Telescope is widely regarded as one of the most significant accomplishments of humankind. After a rocky beginning that necessitated a service run to adjust for a mirror fault, the orbiting observatory has been expanding our understanding of the universe for decades longer than was anticipated. It is currently projected by NASA that Hubble will be permanently shut down within the next few years. Jared Isaacman, a billionaire, has proposed a private expedition to repair Hubble, which would be an alternative to allowing the renowned observatory to deteriorate into a state of disrepair. However, emails that have recently been made public demonstrate that NASA considers the potential dangers of such a trip could be too severe.
With the help of Space Shuttles, NASA was able to carry out a series of servicing missions in order to repair and enhance Hubble. However, the final tune-up for Hubble was carried out in 2009, which was just before the Shuttle program came to an end. Ever since that last trip, Hubble has been losing hardware and gradually sinking toward the surface of the earth. In the event that nothing is done, NASA now forecasts that it will descend into the atmosphere sometime in the early 2030s.
As a contributor with SpaceX, Jared Isaacman is eager to take action and is willing to put his money where his voice is. A plan to deploy the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft to carry out another servicing trip was approved by NASA in 2022, and the agency agreed to explore the plan. By boosting Hubble’s orbit and replacing old components, such a mission may perhaps add decades to the space telescope’s lifespan.
Following the announcement of SpaceX’s new spacesuits, Isaacman has just reaffirmed his intention to repair the Hubble space telescope spacecraft. These long-awaited EVA suits are intended to provide protection for astronauts while they are carrying out spacewalks. The business intends to show their effectiveness on Isaacman’s Polaris Dawn mission in the coming months. NPR, on the other hand, has obtained a collection of official communications from NASA that demonstrate a substantial amount of concern around the possibility of SpaceX sending a crew to Hubble.
However, there are still obstacles to overcome, despite the fact that administrators understand that allowing Isaacman to foot the price is beneficial for NASA. “This is a very challenging concept for NASA legal and procurement,” wrote Barbara Grofic, the program manager for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). “This is a fantastic savings for NASA.” It was brought to her attention that the feasibility study would be submitted to the administration of NASA the entire next day. After only a few months had passed since that presentation, the organization began taking actual efforts to arrange for the potential mission in the beginning of 2023. There was an invitation extended to Isaacman and other representatives from SpaceX and Polaris to visit NASA facilities to discuss the telescope. After that meeting, Isaacman appeared to have a positive outlook. “We feel incredibly fortunate to play a small part in what we hope will become an exciting mission,” Isaacman said in an email. “We hope that this mission will be exciting.”
When the particulars started to come together, members of the NASA staff started expressing their reservations. Shuttle flights lingered over Hubble for a week, which provided astronauts with the opportunity to experiment with the gear. However, Dragon does not have the capability to do such a maneuver. Keith Kalinowski, an expert on the Hubble Space Telescope, expressed to NASA in April 2023 that he thought a reboost mission was a fine idea, but that he considered it would be too risky to use a Polaris spacewalk to accomplish it. In an email sent around the same time, Dana Weigel, who is the director of operations for the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA, stated that “SpaceX’s view of risks and willingness to accept risk is considerably different than NASA’s.” In addition, she expressed concern on the “extreme immaturity of the spacesuit,” which is a reference to the EVA suit that has been revealed since then.
1977 saw the beginning of NASA’s construction of the Hubble space telescope, which was completed in 1985. A launch that was scheduled to take place in 1986 was postponed as a result of the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger; however, the telescope was eventually able to enter orbit in the year 1990. Although the original engineering team devised the equipment and materials that shuttle crews used to operate with Hubble, the gear that SpaceX uses is decades more advanced than what the shuttle crews used. If we attempt to fix the telescope today, we might run into a wide variety of problems that we did not anticipate. After all, NASA is concerned that a Polaris servicing trip would cause damage to the telescope, which would result in it being taken offline much sooner than anticipated. It is also a concern that astronauts might sustain injuries or possibly lose their lives if they seek to extend the mission of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Launching a space telescope is not an easy task, despite the fact that the hazards associated with such a scheme are undeniably very real. A delay of more than a decade occurred before the James Webb Space Telescope was finally launched in late 2021. The amount of time that can be spent on this instrument is in high demand, and it is likely that this demand will continue during the whole life of the observatory. When the enormous and stunning mirror that is the Hubble Space Telescope has the capacity to continue to observe the cosmos for another twenty years, it would be a tragedy to allow it to crash to Earth. If all goes according to plan with Polaris Dawn, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) might be under more pressure to give its approval for the project.